Why Trust is Important for Your Business and Brand

Marty Neumeier notes the distinction between how invisible attributes, especially trust, differentiates branding by B2B and B2C business types:

• The degree to which a customer trusts a product (or company making that product) determines whether he or she buys that product or a competitor’s product.
• The same principle is true if a company sells services—but in a service company, it’s the people—not the product—who must earn the customer’s trust.

Can You Trust Facebook?

Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook continue to obfuscate and avoid putting people and purpose before profit. Their inconsistency, lack of transparency, and lack of respect for users’ privacy destroys trust and demonstrates that they hold your privacy in contempt.

With every action, Facebook proves that its values to “Be bold, focus on impact, move fast, be open, and build social value.” are hollow, empty promises.

Empty promises suck. Would you trust Mark Zuckerberg to give you advice on your company’s values if he said, “To identify your company values, ask, ‘What are you willing to give up?’” I think he should rephrase his question: “To drive shareholder value, my dreams for social engineering, and my company’s values, what are you willing to give up?”

Is Marriott’s Golden Rule for Real?

On the opposite end of the trust spectrum, Marriott builds and nurtures trust with people who are stressed or underserved through its values-driven Golden Rule campaign. When you stay at a Marriott hotel, they make a promise to treat you like they would want to be treated (which, of course, begs the question, “How does Marriott want to be treated?”).

“Treating others like we’d like to be treated,” as a guiding principle is noble—one to which we would all love to aspire. When Marriott’s employees live out what they promise in their Golden Rule campaign, their brand grows stronger and trust in Marriott grows.

For Marriott, it’s about making a human connection—where their brand is perceived as believable—because they view customers as people, not people as customers.

Listen as Often as You Speak

When you make a human connection; where your brand and all it stands for is perceived as believable because your organization views customers as people—not people as customers—your company will grow.

It’s likely that your marketing team’s first inclination is to tell your story from the organization’s perspective—how what you do is extraordinary—without listening to your customer’s perspective—how your customer’s life is better because of what your organization does.

For your story to fit into the worldview of your customer, you must first listen and understand how taking action fulfills their goals or meets their needs. Then you are able to communicate—with clarity and consistency—about how your organization fits into their worldview, not how theirs fits into yours. 

Brian Sooy is the first Level C Certified Brand Strategist and StoryBrand Certified Guide. Brian leads the Aespire branding agency and authors books and thought leadership to help leaders find clarity, focus teams, align culture, build brands, multiply impact, and build thriving businesses.

Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash